We are pleased to present SunCoke’s 2023 Sustainability Report. Reflecting on this past year, it is clear that our successes were the result of the efforts of SunCoke’s employees and I want to thank them for their sustained hard work and dedication. At SunCoke, sustainability is understood as encompassing all business practices that contribute to the long-term resilience of our organization. In 2023, we took strides to advance initiatives across our Sustainability Foundations:
Our Sustainability Foundations form the basis for how we approach long-term value creation for our shareholders, customers, and employees.
Occupational health and safety remained our top priority in 2023. We have taken measures to continuously improve upon our existing safety initiatives and procedures. Our approach to improvement has been characterized by efforts to standardize a uniform safety system where possible, resulting in consistent safety performance and better knowledge sharing across our sites. In terms of key safety metrics, we maintained a Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) of 0.99 for 2023, which remains lower than the industry average for the “All Other Petroleum and Coal Products Manufacturing” and “Iron and Steel Mills” sectors.
In addition to our diligent attention to our safety performance, our operational and financial performance remained strong in 2023. We continued to make capital investments that will position us to continue to deliver value to our shareholders in the years to come. In 2023, we invested $94.5 million in maintenance and growth capital to ensure that our facilities are safe, efficient, reliable, and environmentally compliant, and to advance our growth projects. This marked a significant increase in 2023 compared to our typical annual run-rate of $80 - $85 million, further emphasizing our commitment investing in our facilities. The strong operational performance that comes from these investments provides the basis to grow and diversify our customer and product base. Additionally, in 2023, we completed a capital project for foundry coke screening at our Jewell plant that allows for more efficient and effective sorting of foundry coke prior to shipment—saving time, increasing product yield, lowering emissions, and more efficiently allocating operational expenses. We continue to advance in the foundry market as we secure patents for our innovative approaches.
This culture of continuous improvement is embedded across our operations. This year’s Sustainability Report showcases our culture of innovation and continuous improvement across our Sustainability Foundations. We are committed to implementing and advancing initiatives that allow us to maintain our role as a critical part of the steel value chain and a positive contributor to the communities in which we operate. This approach allows us to improve operational performance while evolving to meet the growing and changing needs of the steel industry.
Steel will be a critical material in the ongoing energy transition. As a producer of coke—a key ingredient in the production of blast furnace steel—SunCoke forms a critical part of the supply chains that depend on steel to build sustainable energy infrastructure and solutions like electricity networks, wind turbines, electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, and geothermal plants.
Beyond the energy transition, steel will remain a critical building block of our societies. We expect the demand for buildings, automobiles, and infrastructure to continue to drive demand for high-strength, high-quality steel. SunCoke can produce the coke critical for the production of this steel and can do so reliably, a trait that is becoming increasingly critical when other coke producers shut down plants and supply chains are compromised. We are proud of our safety, community, and environmental performance and our ability to support our partners in achieving their own supply performance goals.
Looking forward, we see three specific opportunity areas to help the industry meet evolving demands that would also further solidify our place as a critical player in the steel value chain.
First, we will continue to work closely across the industry as a technical partner, committed to education and awareness for our industry and sharing technical expertise with customers in our value chain for mutual benefit.
Second, we will continue to maintain strong customer relationships and optimize our operations, which employ the most environmentally sound cokemaking technology available, positioning ourselves as the preferred supplier of high-strength, high-quality coke. In addition, we will continue to explore opportunities and technology that will allow us to support our customers as the steel industry evolves.
Lastly, we will continue to adapt to market changes by leveraging our core competencies to diversify our customers and product offerings. This includes our continued expansion in the foundry coke market, our continuous business development efforts in logistics, and ongoing work on the potential partnership with U.S. Steel to manufacture Granulated Pig Iron (GPI) at the Granite City Works facility.
As we further evaluate the energy and lower carbon economy transition, including the impacts on SunCoke and others in the steel industry, we are challenged to think more strategically about the long-term and to plan for a number of possible scenarios. We see opportunities in these challenges, such as growing our participation in the U.S. coke market as competitors’ aging and less environmentally friendly facilities go offline, and will focus on further integrating sustainability into our business while assisting our customers in meeting their sustainability goals.
Michel G. Rippey Chief Executive Officer
Katherine Gates President